• Crime has come down, city’s transport networks have grown, people have more leisure choices now
• A big downside for residents is how homes have shrunk, cost much more and the queue is longer
• With more than 7 million people, Hong Kong is both a bustling high-rise metropolis and a city with wide open spaces. It is a global financial centre and a place where conservation, heritage and the arts have come to matter more.Since its return to Chinese sovereignty in 1997, the city had more than two decades of boisterous civil society activism, street processions and demonstrations. All that changed in the wake of 2019’s social unrest as Beijing introduced a national security law and sweeping electoral reforms.
• But has Hong Kong become more liveable for residents who call the city home? The Post examines some indicators of whether life has changed for the better over the past 25 years.
• 1. Has the housing situation improved?

• No. Just ask poor Hongkongers languishing in the queue for public rental housing and middle-class homebuyers who cannot afford the exorbitant prices of private flats.

The wait for a public rental flat is almost as long today as in 1997. The average waiting time was 6.6 years in 1997, dropped to 1.8 years in 2007, but by March this year, stood at 6.1 years, the longest in more than two decades. While waiting, many of the city’s poorest live in tiny, subdivided spaces, the worst housing option. 

2. Does it cost more to live in Hong Kong now? 

Yes. Although incomes have gone up, that has been outpaced by the rising cost of housing, food and transport.

The median monthly wage for Hongkongers for the period May to June last year was HK$18,700, up about 68 per cent from HK$11,113 in April to September 1997.

The price of a Big Mac hamburger from fast food chain McDonald’s, which has more than 200 outlets across the city, more than doubled from HK$10.20 in 2000 to HK$22 this year.